The Farmer-Jacobson
combo makes sense to France's Marie Yates. "You wouldn't expect her to
be involved with a 9-to-5er."

Yates are equally disputed. The
story begins in Seattle in 1973, when Seattle Post-Intelligencer film critic
William Arnold embarked on a biography of Farmer after being intrigued by a revival of her
1936 film Come and Get It. An article about Arnold's planned book that appeared
in the Scientology publication Freedom brought him together with Yates, then a
struggling Hollywood producer-agent anxious for a promising property. Yates became
Arnold's literary agent and negotiated a movie deal with Noel Marshall. It stipulated that
Arnold would write the Shadowland screenplay and Yates would be associated with
the film's production.

Meanwhile Jacobson surfaced in the Freedom
editor's Hollywood office and reportedly offered to reveal important secrets of Farmer's
life for $25,000. Arnold claims he sent Yates to meet with Jacobson but dismissed
Jacobson's statements as "outlandish." But sometime later, according to
Marshall, Yates started up a side deal with Brooks, who was interested in acquiring the
Farmer property. "Brooks apparently offered her a better position in the making of
the Frances film if she could get him the rights without paying me fees as
co-producer," Marshall says. (Yates has earned about $100,000 in association with
Brooks as well as "co-producer" billing.) As Marshall states and Arnold
confirms, "Mel Brooks told Arnold that his lawyers

could get him

[Arnold]
out of the contract and that they could easily 'f--- Marshall.'" But Arnold says he
found Brooks "cruel and unpleasant" and refused to dump Marshall. There the
matter rested for "a few days," recalls Arnold, "till I saw a piece in Variety
that Brooks was making this movie about Frances Farmer and that Marie Yates was the
co-producer. Just like that. She didn't even call me and tell me. I was really mad and
phoned her and said, 'You can't do this, you're still my agent.' She said that, well, she
thought she could. But she had a contractual obligation to me. She got 10 percent of my
book, and then she sold me out."

Though Arnold charges that the resulting Frances
screenplay is "a complete adaptation of my book," Yates insists that what
was not in the public domain came from extensive interviews with Jacobson. For instance,
there is the gruesome scene near the end of the film in which a doctor performs a lobotomy
on Farmer, of which no mention is found in Will There Really Be a Morning? The
operation is described in great detail in Arnold's Shadowland, but Yates claims
that the scene was re-created from "Jacobson's records." Yates further claims
that her discovery of Jacobson "never came through Bill Arnold" but rather from
her own research and her interviews with Seattle judges. "I don't want to mention
their names," she says.

Arnold scoffs at Yates'
alleged research. "It was easy for her to believe Jacobson because it was convenient
for her," he says. "She was a person who had been around Hollywood a long time
and had never made a feature film. This was her big opportunity. You get around the big
money and the big glory and the temptation is great." Retorts Yates: "Mel Brooks
wanted him to come aboard at one point, but he didn't. It's a pure case of sour
grapes." Though Brooks has declined comment, the sniping continues as both sides gear
up for further nastiness when the lawsuit comes to court, possibly in June. As for Frances
Farmer, who gave up her film career rather than subject herself to the mores of Hollywood
Babylon, she would doubtless be watching it all with a keen sense of irony.

This article appeared in PeopleMagazine
- March 21, 1983 - Written by Joshua Hammer, reported by Joseph Pilcher